trillian

I totally agree with this. There is an "unnamed" category of people who don't think about religion at all. And don't care to. There should be a "Don't know" box on the polls.

I used to routinely check Roman Catholic even when I was agnostic. It felt like my heritage, almost like the race box.

If they said "Are you a Roman Catholic", I'd say "Yes"
But had they said "Do you believe that Jesus, the miracle performer, resurrected and saved us from sin" I would have said "No"

Essentially, I think the census data is crap.

mike_decock

I think so, too. You may have 2 billion if you include the "cultural Christians", but I'd put those who believe in a resurrected Jebus at less than 1 billion.

-Mike...

Kintaro

what about the Jedi ?

I was only 17 at the last census here, so I had no say in it (heck, she could have put down fundie for me), but for the next one, I'll write Jedi or whatever canadians decide to put down. I'll have to inform myself with StatsCan to see how many people does it take to measure a new religion.



I'd also think of Long Hair Religion, but I think the guy running the website is kinda nutty.

spurly

My guess is that the only one who really knows is God himself - since he knows the hearts of all men. I don't worry much about statistics like these - i just let God work it all out.

Kevin

Clara Listensprechen

Hmmmm, I wonder if members of the Church Of The Subgenius count as Christians?

The number of Christians in the world really does depend on who does the counting, as it's impacted by what the counter considers to really be Christian, and, indeed, a good number might have been baptised Christians but no longer practice.

And then there's the matter of counting "true" Christians...another bogus premise. Who among us is to judge that the Raelians aren't also Christian? Or Christian Scientists? Or Scientologists? Or David Koresh's gang, or Jim Jones' Koolaid Klub even? A person who is about the business of counting all those that profess to believe in some sort of divinity of Jesus, therefore Christians, would necessarily count all the l00ney fringes. Those that try to count only "true" Christians are saddled with defining what a "true" Christian is, while necessarily (or not) making exceptions for the ancient sects such as Gnostics, or including/excluding Muslims and all of those sects therein, in/excluding the Dervish, the Sufi, and similar mystics.

When encountering a statistic like the headcount of all Christians on the planet, one has to necessarily wonder what exactly it was that got counted, what didn't.

So too is it for the statistic which states that "The Bible" is the number one world best seller. The ONLY way to make that claim is to add up the total sales of EVERY VERSION sold. The stat falls apart when version distinctions are made. No given version of "The Bible" is ever close to being any kind of number one world best seller.

Nobody bears false witness with more artful finesse than those who profess that God has a law against it.

Radorth

Yes well, at least they have a law against it.

Rad